PROJECT SUMMARY This proposal is to fund the Ninth International Tunicate Meeting to be held at New York University, from July 16th to July 21st, 2017. This meeting attracts the international community of researchers using tunicates as model organisms for a broad range of studies, including cell and developmental biology, neurobiology and immunity, post-embryonic development and regeneration, genetics and genomics, ecology and evolution. Tunicates are the closest living relatives and comprise thousands of species that roam the oceans worldwide. For each one of the above topics, tunicates provide unique advantages as model organisms: for cell and developmental biology, they display simple embryos with fixed lineages that allows chordate development to be studied with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution; for neurobiology, they possess an extremely simplified central nervous system containing only ~150 neurons. A fully characterized synaptome and simple swimming behavior; for immunity, colonial ascidians possess the only established allorecognition system outside of vertebrates; for evolution, the stereotyped early development of ascidians remained virtually unchanged in the face of over 450 million years of profound genome divergence, making them the best test-bed to study developmental systems drift; finally, tunicates are poised to provide important multidisciplinary insights into the impact of global environmental changes on marine communities. The above topics will be covered through approximately eight plenary sessions, two formal poster sessions and two keynote lectures. A scientific committee representative of the diversity of the field has been defined and will be tasked with selecting abstracts for oral presentations, paying particular attention to appropriate representation of diverse groups, especially trainees. A career panel workshop will address the particularities and opportunities using tunicates as model systems in academia. A round table discussion will be held in a town hall meeting format to discuss community-wide issue such as developing genomic resources (e.g. reagents for CRISPR/Cas9 or RNAi), defining guidelines and best practices, developing, distributing and maintaining experimental and database resources). Social functions will further encourage informal interactions and foster creative discussions. As for previous versions of the meeting, the proceedings will be published either through a single meeting report and/or by partnering with a sponsoring published to produce a dedicated journal issue made up of several papers focused on tunicates. This version of the international tunicate meeting promises to be particularly vibrant as suggested by the initial enthusiasm generated by our announcement to hold it in New York City.